238 THE CHINESE
merchants in its ports. Not only did it continue the Tang custom
of allowing them to settle many of their disputes among them-
selves, but it permitted them to decide according to their own
laws all but the more serious offenses of foreigners against Chi-
nese. The foreign merchants seem mostly to have been Moslem
Arabs. Many of them married Chinese women and at least one
man of Arabic origin held high office under the Sung and at the
close of the dynasty went over to the Mongols. A colony of Jews
which has been finally absorbed into the surrounding population
only in our own day built a synagogue at K'aif eng.
Trade with Japan flourished. Japanese Buddhist monks, prin-
cipally of the Zen (Ch'an) sect, journeyed to China to visit the
strongholds of their school. Chinese monks, coming to Japan,
were often given high positions in monasteries and were trans-
mitters, not only of Buddhism, but of Chinese civilization in gen-
eral, including the Confucian Classics and secular literature.
Sung Neo-Confucianism was to have a marked effect in the islands.
Official intercourse between the two governments, however, ap-
pears not to have been established.
The Chinese records assert that tribute-bearing embassies ar-
rived in the Sung court from Champa, in the present French Indo-
China, from states in such distant regions as Java and Sumatra,
and even from India. Whether these embassies indicate the recog-
nition of China's suzerainty is highly doubtful, but they probably
show that these principalities deemed commercial relations profit-
able. Before the dynasty was driven south, moreover, two em-
bassies came from Fulin, or, as it will be recalled, what we now
call the Near East.
The Chinese knowledge of geography was expanding, and a
work of the time shows that some information concerning even
such distant countries as Egypt and Sicily had reached the Mid-
dle Kingdom. This was brought not only by foreign merchants
but also by Chinese who went abroad and returned with news of
distant lands. Chinese sailing craft were improving: some of the
vessels accommodated several hundred persons as passengers or
crew.
The articles of trade included, as heretofore, only those which
combined small bulk with large value—among them piece-goods,
lead, gold., silver, porcelain-ware, incense and scented woods,